Current Ocean Conditions in the Gulf of Mexico

Why are these maps helpful?

These maps of ocean surface currents determined from satellite measurements provide information to scientists, decision makers, and emergency response personnel about the present oceanic flows and how they are changing with time.

The map below shows the estimate of the surface currents in the Gulf of Mexico. The red star indicates the location of the Deepwater Horizon. The solid contours indicate the location of the Loop Current and anticyclonic rings and eddies (red) and cyclonic eddies (blue). These maps are only available for the period of the oil spill.

Surface currents in the GOM and Loop Current

For surface currents fields on previous dates:

To see an animation of the surface currents field, please select one of the month below:

May 2010 August 2010
June 2010
July 2010

SHA data source: US Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE)

Currents produced by NOAA/AOML and NOAA/CoastWatch.